Last Saturday, January 26, marked the first day that it became illegal to unlock your smartphone without permission from the carriers. Of course, many users got upset over the news and for good reason, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation has clarified some details about the new laws regarding unlocking and jailbreaking your phone.
iOS 6.1 officially rolled out today, and already it's been hacked into and jailbroken. Courtesy of Redsn0w, pre-A5 iPhone and iPod Touch devices are now able to jailbreak on iOS 6.1. Granted, it's a tethered jailbreak, but it's better than nothing if you really want to update. Furthermore, an untethered jailbreak that will support the iPhone 5 is said to be arriving on February 3.
Last week, amid the chaos that was CES, we learned that coder Netham45 from the XDA Developers Forum delivered a jailbreak for Surface RT. Aptly named Jailbreak RT, this batch file is good news for those in the homebrew community, as it allows users to install unsigned apps on the ARM-based device. Without the jailbreak, users can only run authorized apps found in Microsoft's Windows Store, and it appears the company would like to keep it that way.
If you're familiar with jailbreaking, then you're undoubtedly familiar with iOS hacker extraordinaire Pod2g, who's responsible for the Absinth 2.0 release for iOS devices running iOS 5.1.1 back in May -- his most recent endeavor. However, he's been focusing on a slightly different area of iOS, and that's app development. Pod2g released PodDJ today for the iPad.
So far, Microsoft hasn't been supremely successful with its Surface RT tablet. The Windows RT running ARM-powered tablet has sold slowly with Microsoft blaming much of the poor sales on the fact that it doesn't have a wide distribution platform. Reports have surfaced this week that the Windows RT operating system has now been jailbroken.
Just a couple days ago, we received the news that that popular pirate app store for iOS, Installous, shut down along with the entire Hackulous team. Hackulous is regarded as one of the biggest names in the iOS jailbreak community, so seeing their doors close is certainly a huge victory for anti-piracy advocates, but that hasn't stopped from other iOS piracy sources from taking Installous' place.
Apple most likely sighed a huge sigh of relief when they found out that Installous, the popular jailbroken pirating app for iOS, shut down a couple days ago. However, it looks like there's another threat to replace Installous. A new hack allows users to bypass Apple DRM and install pirated apps without the need to jailbreak.
The dev team behind the popular pirate app store for iOS, Installous, has announced that they have closed their doors and have shut down Installous as well. The team blames “stagnant” forums and the difficulty in moderating them as the reason behind their decision to kill the service, which will undoubtedly be a huge victory against iOS software piracy.
The popular new app switcher that we told you about a couple weeks ago is now available for iOS 5.1 devices and higher. Previously, it was only available for iOS 6 devices, but the developer has now released it for those who aren't willing to upgrade to Apple's latest operating system. The jailbreak is only available for iPhone at the moment.
Last week we told you about Auxo, the reinvented app switcher that was originally just a concept and a thought, but it turned into a reality thanks to a determined developer. Finally, the jailbreak tweak is now available for iOS 6 devices for $1.99, which is certainly a small price to pay for a much better alternative to Apple's default app switcher.
Back in early October, one creative iOS user came up with the idea of a completely new app switcher that would be leaps and bounds above Apple's own offering, and it was use webOS-like cards instead of just icons, making it not only a more user-friendly concept, but a visually-appealing one as well. Yesterday, it was announced that this new app switcher concept has been put into development and will be released soon for jailbroken iPhones.
In the wake of last week's iOS 6 jailbreak hoax, we're starting to see other fake jailbreak fixes pop up on the internet in an attempt to capitalize on the success of last week's prank. Websites by the name of OpenAnyPhone.com and iPhoneJailbreakUnlock.org are claiming to have a working iOS 6 untethered jailbreak for all eligible iPhones. However, unlike last week's attempt, this is one is as fake as it gets.
